Happy New Year, everyone! The end of one year and the start of another is always a good time to reflect on what’s been done and what will be accomplished next. I took a bit of time over the holiday season to recharge the creative batteries and figure out what’s up next for SeaLeft Studios now that Sleuthhounds: The Yuletide Tail is out the door.

It was roughly five years ago that I first started thinking about creating a Sleuthhounds computer adventure game. At that time there weren’t any adventure game engines around with the capabilities I was looking for so I started working on one of my own in my spare time. That spare time shifted to full time in the beginning of 2015, which saw the production and release of The Unlocked Room. This wasn’t the Sleuthhounds game I had been planning.

The Unlocked Room introduced the character of Pureluck Homes and was a good starting point for making adventure games but still only a starting point. This was followed up with The Cursed Cannon, which introduced character Jane Ampson and refined the art style and capabilities of the game engine. This still wasn’t the original Sleuthhounds game I had been planning.

There followed a few side trips with the trio of Sleuthhounds holiday themed games, The Valentine’s Vendetta, The Halloween Deception, and The Yuletide Tail. Each of those games further helped to refine the game engine and expand on the library of game assets I had for making the Sleuthhounds games. Oh, and somewhere in there I made time to begin work on the tactical stealth game Robyn HUD.

Of course none of those games were the original Sleuthhounds game I had been planning.

As 2017 ended and 2018 began I was faced with the choice of what to put my development efforts into next. It wasn’t an easy choice. I really wanted to continue production on Robyn HUD but I found that I wanted to finally, finally commence work on that original Sleuthhounds idea even more. At the same time I took a good, hard, critical look at how much work was still outstanding on Robyn HUD. Despite all the time I’ve already spent on it, I realized that to complete that game would take even longer than to make the Sleuthhounds game I was envisioning.

As 2018 opens, I’ve made the difficult decision to put my development time into that original Sleuthhounds concept. I still very much want to see Robyn HUD come to fruition and will find a way to chip away at the work on it throughout the year. For the time being though, my entire focus will be on the Sleuthhounds game as I take the various notes and hazy ideas I’ve amassed for it over the years and refine those into an actual, workable design for the game. Watch the blog for further updates on both Sleuthhounds and Robyn HUD.